My Inner Sky: On Embracing Day, Night, and All the Times in Between

But at a certain point, healing means going out into the world and being in it. This is the hardest part. You can read all you want about how to grow a garden, but until you take yourself down to the plant store and ask for help, invest in some seedlings, and try your luck at keeping them alive, you’re never going to become a gardener. I’m sorry. You can’t be one in your head.

I noticed magic, so magic was more likely to happen. I began to realize it was my power.

When logic fails us, it’s an inconvenience. When magic fails us, it feels like an essential part of our humanity is brutally taken away: our ability to imagine beyond our circumstances, our potential to make meaning from the ordinary.

The opposite of depression is not happiness, but wanting.

think humans might be so uncomfortable with transition periods because we don’t give ourselves the right to be lonely and uncomfortable like lobsters do. We’re so often told, “Focus on the positive. Choose happiness. Good vibes only” that we feel like something must be wrong with us when we’re not a living, breathing inspirational cross-stitch pillow.

There isn’t a satisfying range of vocabulary for experiences that are deemed taboo, and there certainly aren’t accepted ways to celebrate and mourn the highs and lows.

Why do I have to bring light to every sad, broken, fucked-up man who can’t find himself on his own? Go travel or join a meditation club, don’t use women! Write in your journal!

I want the full menu, everything available to me in this life: dark, bright, that purply-pink weird twilight color, and golden.

Were any of those stars dead? Did it matter at all? What’s incredible about Becky is that the magic is real to her no matter what. She has the wisdom of a spiritual authority who says of their holy book of choice, “All of this is true, and maybe some of it actually happened.

To become as present in your own city as you would be while traveling, you have to make the city feel new: take a different commute home, listen to different music, go into restaurants where you haven’t looked at the menu beforehand and may not be sure what to order. You have to get a little disoriented, even annoyed. That’s what it’s like to be around humans, who are unpredictable and often annoying.

Giving my transitions as much attention and curiosity as my brightest afternoons has helped me appreciate the inner sky I’m continually trying to make more colorful. Who wants a sky that is blue all the time?

You can’t be what you’re not. You can only be the fullest version of yourself. You can’t please everyone.

But you’re real. And he’s such a huge part of you; you say it all the time, you’re just like him. You don’t need a coin to tell you that he really did love you, and in a lot of ways, still does. So yeah, no coin, but you still have you.

efcharistó. I read that our word “eucharist,” a term which implies grace and spiritual gratitude, comes directly from this modern Greek word. In its etymology, efcharistó implies that we did nothing to deserve the offering, nor did we hold the power to make it happen. It was simply an act of grace, for which we give thanks.

She’d been falling back on the apparent magic of chance-meeting her now-ex-husband for years to get through the misery of being attached to the wrong person. Now it was time for her to concoct the magic herself.

it’s a discipline and a practice for me to keep it magical.

It’s not easy to be attentive, just as it’s not easy to be optimistic when the world is feeling overheated and overwhelming.

sensitivity is a strange asset in a big city;

war. When her father died, the curtain lifted, and the

cumulonimbus clouds that look like friendly ancient grandfathers. I want the full menu, everything available to me in this life: dark, bright, that purply-pink weird twilight color, and golden.

Because of all the self-help books I've amassed, I didn't know that you could heal with the love of another person. I thought you were supposed to do it all alone. I thought the worst thing that could happen to you, in fact, was depending on someone else for your emotional stability, and then not being capable of pumping gas by yourself.

El tiempo lo cura todo on a locket for me—time cures all. I’m not sure if time cures, but time certainly allows for space to explore every angle of a challenge.